

In the birding world, LBJ stands for “little brown jobs,” a colloquial term for small, brownish, and notoriously difficult-to-identify passerine birds. I have discovered that the Cloud Forest of Ecuador has its own LBJ’s, that are small and brownish, but they are not passerines. They are hummingbirds and they have names that are difficult for me to remember. Here are two of the three LBJ’s we’ve encountered here this week, the Brown Violetear and the Brown Inca, both spectacular birds in their own right and not at all forgettable as the name LBJ implies.